Having lived in both central Stockholm and central Madrid, I wholeheartedly support the requirements for parking spaces. People will own cars, and they need to be somewhere.
The regulation could be relaxed to allow separate garages or parking lots within a reasonable walking distance, but the books should be balanced.
In Stockholm some builders have argued that people might soon drive electric box carts or some other environmental camouflage for getting rid of the parking lots and cram in more expensive flats.
This spin was successful in one area but the sales prices were as high as usual and the savings where just added to the builders profit which is considerable to begin with.
I wholehearted disagree with regulations that require parking spaces. People are less likely to own cars if they knew they were paying extra to park them. Parking spaces should have prices, so we can use the market to distribute them in their scarcity. We call that: unbundled parking.[0]
As it is, paid parking is being tremendously undercut by free parking. People will go very far out of their way, roaming the streets for hours every week looking for a rare free parking spot, but there is almost no will to build a guaranteed spot in a paid parking structure.
This contributes to traffic, greenhouse gas emissions, wear on infrastructure, noxious gases emitted in residential neighborhoods, and poisonous relations between neighbors.
A related issue is that cars require a tremendous amount of space for what they provide, and there is no way we can afford to build enough spaces for all the cars that we think we can own because the parking is free. Even if the parking was adequate when new, it is not adequate anymore. And even when new, adequate parking was enormously expensive.[1]
My own neighborhood in San Francisco was built in the 1950s for single-family, single-earner households. Then women joined the workforce. Then children grew up needing cars. Then families doubled up in one house, or landlords turned the homes into rooming houses; and a house with a 1-car garage is now associated with 5 cars or more.
The price to sell is not directly connected to the cost to build.[2] Depending on the location, I think the no-parking micro-unit is actually more valuable to me than the suburban mansion, if it means I can reach everything I need by foot or bicycle and avoid paying all the fees and wasted time in traffic of car or bus.
I don’t care whether the developer makes a profit; except insofar as a developer should be paid for doing work that I think benefits society, and also as most of the income goes to the developer’s investors, that is, schoolteacher pension funds and such.
>This contributes to traffic, greenhouse gas emissions, wear on infrastructure, noxious gases emitted in residential neighborhoods, and poisonous relations between neighbors.
Which are exactly the problems that in a perfect world where ALL cars have their own spot to be parked at near home (and near office, etc.) would not exist, and that can be solved EITHER by making adequate parking spots OR getting rid of the cars.
I presume that if every home owner signs an affidavit where he/she promises he/she would NOT ever buy or use a car near the house, the parking area requirements could be lowered.
>>This contributes to traffic, greenhouse gas emissions, wear on infrastructure, noxious gases emitted in residential neighborhoods, and poisonous relations between neighbors.
>Which are exactly the problems that in a perfect world where ALL cars have their own spot to be parked at near home (and near office, etc.) would not exist, and that can be solved EITHER by making adequate parking spots OR getting rid of the cars.
The perfect world where every car has a parking spot without traffic, infrastructure, etc., CANNOT exist. We need to get rid of the cars.
The regulation could be relaxed to allow separate garages or parking lots within a reasonable walking distance, but the books should be balanced.
In Stockholm some builders have argued that people might soon drive electric box carts or some other environmental camouflage for getting rid of the parking lots and cram in more expensive flats.
This spin was successful in one area but the sales prices were as high as usual and the savings where just added to the builders profit which is considerable to begin with.